Google Ads credits: maximizing them with the tips of the experts
Since May 27th, the first grants of the Google program allocating 340 million dollars in ADS credits for small and medium-sized enterprises in difficulty due to the pandemic and the contraction of business started flowing. The funds, already renamed “Coronavirus credits” or “Covid-19 credits“, can be used to give new visibility to those who have suffered losses in the past months and win new customers, and experts advise some strategies to exploit them to the maximum.
The grants of Coronavirus credits for Google Ads has started
The first to receive the credits were qualified advertisers in New Zealand, which since May 27th have found the notification of the credit received by Google, to be reinvested in new advertisements in the system of Ads with Google by the end of the year.
As already specified in the definition of the requirements of the program, the amount of credit will vary depending on the advertiser and the history of its expenditure in ADS, up to a maximum of a 1,000 US dollars or the equivalent in the currency of the account.
Google’s support to SMEs
The ADS credit program is designed to give practical support to SMEs severely affected by the crisis globally caused by the Covid-19 and can be useful to engage customers again in the coming months and strengthen their customer base.
How to use the ADS credits: suggestions of the experts
Ginny Marvin on Search Engine Land interviewed some experts – Julie Friedman Bacchini of Neptune Moon LLC, Robert Brady of Righteous Marketing and Navah Hopkins of Hennessey Digital – to seek their opinion and provide guidance to companies on how to well spend and maximize the COVID-19 credit on Google Ads. These are the points that have emerged.
- Efficiency and innovation in the ads
The first to answer is Julie Friedman Bacchini, who invites us to focus on the efficiency of account ads and not to neglect innovation and changes. According to Friedman Bacchini “now is the time to really think about the efficiency of accounts, especially for small businesses”, trying to concentrate the “resources where you have a better chance of achieving conversions, but, at the same time, do not be afraid to do something other than what you have historically done”.
If the context and conditions of the business have changed significantly, says the expert, then “even your PPC advertising may require a big change!”.
There are a few questions that can guide new spendings towards efficiency:
In which geographical area did the ads perform best (in particular in the last 2 months)?
How to focus your campaigns on the areas where you have been successful in the past?
Do you want to strengthen your focus on what you are advertising based on what or how you are able to provide your company’s products or services?
Is the copy of your ad relevant, up-to-date and appropriate to the current climate?
Ci sono alcune domande che possono orientare la nuova spesa verso l’efficienza:
- In which geographical area did the ads perform best (in particular in the last 2 months)?
- How to focus your campaigns on the areas where you have been successful in the past?
- Do you want to strengthen your focus on what you are advertising based on what or how you are able to provide your company’s products or services?
- Is the copy of your ad relevant, up-to-date and appropriate to the current climate?
- Reinforcing campaigns with less budget but promising results
Then it is up to Robert Brady of Righteous Marketing to express his opinion on the best way to take advantage of the new budget for Google ADS. The expert starts from a general consideration – most SMEs have limited budgets for promotion, based on what they can touch with their hands in their business – and then elaborates three questions that can help guide the new expenditure.
- Are there active campaigns with interesting conversion metrics (a high ROAS – return on ad spend – low cost-conversion ratio, etc.) that have a limited budget? These are the main candidates to use new credits with maximum return.
- Has the business recently added new services (such as on-site collection, home delivery, online shopping / e-commerce) that we are not yet promoting? Allocate part of these dollars to support these new offers.
- Is remarketing part of the current mix of advertising? Otherwise, use extra credits to set up and test remarketing for people who visit the site and DO NOT convert immediately.
- Evaluating other channels of Google’s ecosystem
The latest contribution – which is also the most articulate one – is offered by Navah Hopkins, director of paid media at Hennessey Digital, who first encourages everyone to let themselves be guided by data, which can help small and medium-sized enterprises (and not only) to find the right way to optimize investments.
According to the expert, “it may be necessary to revisit the tactics that worked a few months ago (and that is totally fine), but as long as the company metrics are at the center of all digital marketing decisions, you will overcome this difficult period”.
Again, there are three questions that can help you maximize your new budget.
- With which parts of the activity you manage to gain the best margins?
It can be tempting to use digital marketing for all parts of the company, but this can mean a disaster, especially for small-budgeted SMEs: Hopkins advises all companies to assess where they earn the most, within the regions served or the products supplied. Allocating the extra share of ADS credits per day to campaigns focused on high-profit products or services ensures that funds are able to deliver good results.
Also, as a practical suggestion, any amount of credit you get “should be divided by 30.4” in order to know what share to add to your daily campaigns budget. If we want to launch a new campaign with these credits, she adds, “keep in mind that Search is probably NOT the best house, because of the price of auctions and acceleration times”, but it would be better to focus on “a Display or Youtube campaign”.
- Which are the areas with the highest leads/sellings abilities?
In addition to profit margins, we also need to pragmatically think about our leads, explains Hopkins: “if they come, will I be able to serve them within a reasonable amount of time or will they become a wasted expense because I can’t get there in time?”.
We therefore need to focus our budget on the prospects where we have less and easier service time that can ensure that the valuable extra marketing dollars reach the highest ROI. This could mean changing the ad schedule, so that it is published only during working hours (adapting to the time zone of potential customers), or increasing the budget in a campaign based on specific locations and services.
As an additional note, the expert remembers that if we are making automatic offers (“which I do not recommend at this time, unless you have kept your campaigns active during the COVID pandemic, as due to the crisis I have seen automatic offers go down as never before), we have to give any budget change a five-day timing; if the offers are manual, we can gradually increase week after week.
If all parts of the company are starving, factorize into margins to break ties, Hopkins sums up.
- Is Google Search the best house for this donation?
“Often we fall into the default trap of thinking of Google only as a Search”, or only in the product of the Search. This means leaving out Youtube and Display, incredibly useful and increasingly profitable channels. “Since the maximum you’ll see from this grant is a thousand dollars, the funds could go further if they feed a community engagement campaign via Display or if they show your fantastic team and remind people that you’re open via Youtube“, advises the expert who thinks that “these channels provide potential fuel for the audience for future Search campaigns”.
If the prospect of creating a Display or Youtube spot seems daunting, do not despair, concludes Hopkins: “responsive display ads allow the use of archive photos and scanning of your site”, while “on Youtube Google launched Youtube Video Builder, which is a free way to make videos of 6 and 15 seconds” without the need of too much professional skills.
